A little bit of this and that

Customer (dis)service

We booked a flat few months ago, and were at builders office over the weekend to submit our cheques against the demand note they had sent. We met the Sales Lady (SL) to give those.

SL: What four cheques? Why can’t you transfer the money to one account and give us lesser cheques ??
Us: Why is it a problem to make 4 receipts? We don’t want to transfer the money. It is problematic to explain all this stuff when filing IT returns.
SL: But this one cheque is for just 20 k, you could have transferred this.
Us: (Again) Why should we?
SL: (Giving us looks) Theek hai. Baitho.

The attitude is as if they are doing us a favour by accepting our money. SL then went into the inside office, we hoped to work on the receipts.

10 mins later, she is back outside, discussing and chatting with a client. We wait for her to finish the discussion, and then ask her the status.

SL: Oh ab tak nahi mila. Wait I’ll check.

Were the receipts going to come walking to us? We wonder.

15 more mins. No sign of SL. She is still in the room. However, we see a peon come out and give a receipt to the gentleman who had come before us. We are happy thinking ab humara number ayega.

10 more mins. Still no sign. I go in to check what is happening. SL is busy chatting on the phone. I ask her to please hurry up.

10 more mins. Nothing. We are quite agitated by then. P then goes inside to ask her what is happening.

SL: Kya karein system down hai.
P: And when were you planning to tell us that? We are sitting outside from half an hour waiting for the receipts.
SL’s Manager: You should’ve atleast informed them.
SL: (Angry looks towards us) I’ll let you know.

10 more minutes. We are fed up. We go inside her office once again.
SL: System down hai.
Us: Kitna time lagega?
SL: 25 more mins.
Us: How come each and every time we come, the system is down (This is true btw. we have had to wait around 40 minutes each time for a task that should not have taken more than 10 mins)
SL: (Angry at us now.) It’s not as if we want you to wait. Ab system down hai to hum kya kar sakte hai (As if it is out fault that the system is down)
Us: System theek kyu nahi karva lete, how is it down so often?
SL: (Changing the topic)Kahan rehte hai aap?
Us: (We told her. We live near the office)
SL: Then why are you cribbing so much. Its nearby. You can come tomorrow and collect.
Us: Why should we waste another trip to your office? We don’t want to come again
SL: Hume bhi to ana padta hai na (She actually said that)
Us: (!!!!!!!) This is your job, how can you not come. We also go to our offices everyday 😛

Then they offered us the xerox of our cheques, promising that we would get the receipts the next time we visited their office, we refused our of anger. There was another sales rep in the office, who got so angry with our refusal, that he tore the xerox. Seriously, I cannot imagine what he was thinking.

We finally accepted the xerox since we realised there was not much we could do.

We also decided that from now on, we would just take the xerox and collect the receipts on the next visit. Would waste lesser time. Of course this assumes that they will keep the receipts ready by then, which I feel is hoping for a lot 😛

Fun aspect of the incident:

When SL asked the peon to get another xerox for us, he complained why again. When she explained that OSR had torn the first copy, he yelled back at her. She grumbled loudly, ek taraf customer chillate hai, aur doosri taraf peon!

The main point is effective communication, which they totally lack. And the way they put it across to us – it makes all the difference. Hai na ???

We were also treated in an impolite manner, whenever we visited the bank. When we shifted our house to Chennai, we had given change of residence letter to them, which they comfortably misplaced. And they really got panicky, when our installment didnt reach them in time – they mailed us, called us and even sent someone home to collect it and give our receipt. For all the impolite behavior, they got it back very well, by their own careless attitude.

Yes, you are 🙂
Very very irritating. They know, once the customer has invested money, there is very little he can do. So then why care about how many trip he has to make to get the stupid receipt or how long he has to wait. Its not like we have a choice.

Good for you that they had to come back begging at your doorstep! I wish we could get that to happen here 😉

Hehe! I know it would have been super bugging, but it made me laugh :))
One thappad they should get. We do/redo so many things at work, just because we dont serve outsider customers, we dont get to yell at anyone!
But as long as it finally got done, all is well! 🙂

I dont mean to dishearten you but dealing with HDIL is not easy. We have one flat of HDIL in Andheri East which we had bought some 6 years ago, when it was not a big company. Our experience was good so we bough one more flat at Borivali East. This time it was not so good. we booked the flat coz we were told that we would get possession in 4 months but we got the flat after an year! The company is full of shady people and it would be better if you take receipts for every cheque you deposit. Its better that your time is lost rather than money!

The possession delays, I have heard about so many places. Here too out possesion has already been delayed by 6 months. The only this that has me feeling a little better is that the construction is quite according to schedule. The floors are completed, and it does feel like we should get it ready by the date promised.

Ya, I think we might get receipts from the next time. You are suranga are really scaring me!

Well, I did start a blog. But I am so lazy when it comes to writing. Maybe coz I do that for a living:) So I prefer to read blogs:)
Hmmm.. think I will start writing again! Would definitely direct you to my blog then..

Have no experience of HDIL but have tasted this bitter fruit of apathy towards customers by the SLs in different stores…they don’t realize they’re losing on their customer’s trust which has to be very important for them actually !

Actually thinking again I also feel this is not theirs fault..meaning at their level…it trickles down from above you see..the training thing and the motivation to work like a super SL trickles down in the company from up above…the upper rungs need to realize this bottom problem to cure it !

Yes!! I agree with the slap.
They completely suck out the fun part of the new house. The only thing that calms us down, is a sight of the building. We look at it and go – sigh, we’ll be living here the next year, yay!

21 years ago, we sent money to the Pune branch of our bank by what was fairly a revolutionary method then : telegraphic transfer. The builder of our flat would cash our cheque there as he had an account there. There was however, nothng remotely telagraphic about the transfer, and it took more than 21 days for the money to reach . When I confronted the bank manager (India’s leading nationalized bank), and demanded interest due, he treated it like it was peanuts, and eventually gave it saying we were cribbing about a small some (which it was NOT). I had to tell him that I could walk backwards holding the check from Mymbai to Pune in 21 days, were it not for their stupid telegraphic transfer.

It turns out that attaching wrong check digits to money transfer codes , so that the transaction is rejected and returned, is a common trick. Some crooked types at the parent bank played the share market with the money, made a decent killing, and lo behold the money then went to Pune with the correct checkdigit. This was told to me by someone at the Pune bank.

It seems that SL ko bilkul dimaag nahi hai what with stupid talks she made 😀 And the sales rep tore the paper? How did he become a sales rep!? Kudos for keeping cool. This is disgusting. Seriously, it’s really irksome when people behave as if they are doing a favor on you when it’s actually their job to do it.